TEL AVIV (Dispatches) -- The Israeli air force has suspended several high-ranking reservists, a report said, a day after the navy suspended a senior reservist who had vowed to halt volunteer duty to protest the occupying regime’s judicial overhaul.
The commanders of the IAF and navy can either return the high-ranking reservists to service later, or opt to replace them, Kan reported.
The report did not name the IAF reservists who had been suspended, or specify how many of them there were.
Vice Adm. David Sa’ar Salama, the head of the navy, suspended Doron on Thursday, after he and another top reservist, Rear Adm. (res.) Eyal Segev, announced that they would end their volunteer reserve duty, saying they refused to serve in “a dictatorship.”
Segev’s status was to be examined, the Israeli militar said in a statement. Doron and Segev both serve as heads of operational headquarters and as deputies to Salama in emergencies.
The pair joined a long line of navy reservists and other officers who have announced in recent weeks that they would stop showing up for volunteer reserve duty, sparking fears within the military of harm to its operational preparedness.
Salama’s decision was approved by military chief of staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the military said.
Also Friday, the organizers of a petition from veterans of special intelligence units appealed to hardline prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and war minister Yoav Gallant, asking them to “halt the judicial overhaul, come to an agreement and stop the incitement”.
The activists said 1,340 intelligence veterans had signed the petition warning that the occupying regime of Israel was in an “unprecedented time of emergency and plunging into the abyss,” Ynet reported.
More than 10,000 reservists who show up for duty on a voluntary basis have said in recent months that they would no longer do so in protest of the judicial overhaul,

charging that the occupying regime’s plans to weaken the judiciary will turn Israel into chaos. No official figures have been made available on how many reservists have failed to show up for duty thus far.
Unlike most reservists who are called up for duty with a formal order for several days a year, members of top units, especially pilots, are expected to train and carry out missions more frequently and in a voluntary manner due to the nature of their positions. Many voluntarily continue their reserve duty past the exemption age of 45 for officers and 49 for certain positions.
In recent weeks, Halevi, air force head Bar and others have warned that the reservist protests are having an increasingly negative impact on military readiness, drawing rebukes from Netanyahu, other lawmakers, and supporters of the far-right, religious regime.
Netanyahu’s coalition has rejected the reservists’ protests as a dangerous and unprecedented form of political blackmail by the military. Some coalition lawmakers suggested the protests are tantamount to an attempted military coup.
Security officials voiced concern on Monday that, by allowing repeated public attacks on top military brass, Netanyahu was trying to shift responsibility onto them over the current harm to the state of military readiness.